EY Clients 2018

A listing of Ernst and Young’s largest clients is included below. We provide some background about the client and if they ratified EY as their current auditor. We also provide the amount of fees that EY earns on some of the clients.

Walmart

Walmart is the largest grocery chain in the world. Walmart earned $482 million in revenues in 2015. Walmart chose to ratify EY as their auditor again as part of their 2016 proxy statement. Walmart said that it will benefit from EY’s long tenure as their auditor. EY has been Walmart’s auditor for 45 years.

Walmart also stated that they believe Ernst & Young has an efficient fee structure, and that they believe onboarding a new accountant would be too expensive for shareholders.

EY incurred fees in excess of $21 million related to Walmart in the 2016 fiscal year.

Type of Fee

2016

2015

Audit Fee

$18.4 million

$18.0 million

Audit Related Fees

$1.2 million

$1.3 million

Tax Fees

$2.2 million

$1.2 million

Total

$21.8 million

$20.5 million

Lockheed Martin is one of the world’s largest defense contractors.They earned about $45 billion of revenue in the past year.

The shareholders ratified the appointment of Ernst & Young as the auditor of Lockheed Martin for 2016. There was a slight increase in fees which Lockheed attributes to the acquisition of the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation and the review of Lockheed’s government information technology and technical services business.

You can see the fees that EY incurred related to Lockheed Martin in the table below.

Amazon is a large online retail seller. They are one of the largest and fastest growing companies on the planet.

E&Y has been Amazon’s auditor since their IPO in 1997. As you can see the fees that EY receives from Amazon are relatively low compared to other companies above. Amazon only paid EY a little over $12 million for their recent audit and consulting services. That is astonishingly low.

Type of Fee

2015

2014

Audit Fee

$11.8 million

$9.8 million

Audit Related Fees

$1.1 million

$0.8 million

Tax Fees

$0

$0

Total

$12.9 million

$10.6 million

Facebook is the world’s largest social network. They earned about $17 billion in revenue. Their market capitalization is $360 billion.

Ernst & Young has been Facebook’s auditor since they went public in 2007. As you can see, the fee is relatively low similar to what Amazon pays. Fees aren’t necessarily based on the size of the company. They are based on the complexity of the audit.

You can see that EY has a sizable fee related to tax projects on Facebook. This often happens with young companies. As companies grow and acquire other companies, they face more tax compliance obligations than they were expecting. They then need help with those obligations and utilize the big 4 public accounting firms for that assistance.

Type of Fee

2015

2014

Audit Fee

$6.8 million

$6.2 million

Audit Related Fees

$0.2 million

$0.1 million

Tax Fees

$5.0

$5.3

Total

$12.0 million

$11.6 million

BP is one of the world’s largest integrated oil & gas company’s on the planet. BP earned about $226 billion of revenue according to Fortune 500.